


Balancing The Scales (With Pirate Gold)

by Her_Madjesty



Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [9]
Category: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Pirates, Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28164909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: The first time they cross paths, he presses a kiss to her knuckles in the warmth of her father’s foyer. The second time, Don John presses a gun to her temple.
Relationships: Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)
Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037376
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Balancing The Scales (With Pirate Gold)

**Author's Note:**

> On the *ninth day of Christmas, a harried writer gave to thee...pirates!
> 
> It is once again going on midnight, and I am extremely tired. That said, I hope you will accept this partial gift! You will notice that it is multi-chapter; you can expect the next (and I'm thinking final?) chapter before the end of 2020. I thought about posting it on the 20th as a separate piece, but that felt like cheating.
> 
> In any case, thank you again for all of the support! I'm going to go nap. See you on the 20th!
> 
> *Edit: I can’t count.

The first time they cross paths, he presses a kiss to her knuckles in the warmth of her father’s foyer. Hero remembers the cut of his teeth behind his red lips and the feeling, in the moment, of staring down a hungry, half-tamed wolf.

The second time they cross paths, Don John presses a gun to her temple. The kiss of the cold metal raises goosebumps up and down her arms – and yet, Hero finds herself less intimidated by his dark eyes than she was a year ago.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

*

Ask Hero on her quieter days, when the sun is warm her skin and the only company she keeps is her cousin, and she will admit to a number of things. For example, when she was a girl, she would linger in the window of her father’s villa and look down to the docks, where children her own age ran amok, and wonder over the slap of splintering wood and stone beneath her feet. When she came of age, she would have told anyone who would listen of her excitement to see the regiment return to town, with its many soldiers in their crisp, unstained uniforms.

Catch her on evenings alone, though, when the moon is high and Beatrice has absconded with her husband, and she’ll whisper another truth in your ear –

A soldier may make the finer husband, but that did not mean that she had never dreamed before of a pirate.

Beatrice takes pains to remind her of the childhood dream now, in the early weeks of April in the year after Hero was to be married. Beatrice’s own bags are packed, and her own soldier husband has already settled aboard the ship that is meant to take her, him, and a fine contingent with them away from the island of Sicily.

Hero walks along the docks with her cousin, one of Beatrice’s bags in her hand. They bend their heads together as they did in the days of old, whispering and giggling until even the shopkeeps who, just a year ago, who stand and stare as Hero walked the streets, cannot help but smile.

“You are patient to join us, cousin,” Beatrice says, the wind whipping her curls away from her face. “I fear my husband’s wit has not yet dulled itself against my armor, and thus you may find it practiced upon you.”

“I have bore a wit sharper than his for years much longer,” Hero reassures her, their elbows bumping together.

Beatrice smirks at her, a kind of smug thing that prides herself on what others might consider an insult.

Neither of the women address why it is, precisely, that Hero is traveling with the newly-married couple to the New World. One only has to look to the Lady Hero’s bare left hand, though, to garner a guess.

(The night will live on in her mind forever, and while she has long found it in her heart to forgive the count who wronged her, Hero found herself pressing her gravel-bruised palms to her chest and borrowing breath from Beatrice’s lungs to say to her father, “as it please me, he pleases me not.”)

Her father may have accepted her request, shamed as he was to have believed the plot brought down on his house’s head, but the year that’s passed has made him less the kind figure of her past and more...paternal. He has not accompanied neither his daughter nor his niece down to the docks but has instead contented himself to his fields, where he will foster new vines to growth as he claims he could no longer foster his two wards.

Hero had not argued with him when he bid her go. Instead, she had left what information she had on hand with those who had borne her closest in the past year. Ursula and Margaret alike received both news and what little money Hero could part with and were encouraged, though not in so many words, to explore what other options might be available to them in the months and years to come.

Margaret had left her father’s service a happier woman. Ursula had remained, her old eyes softened and yet sad as Hero walked from the villa’s front gates.

Hero thinks on her as she boards their ship to the New World, called the _Albatross_. She nods and blushes demurely when a few of the sailors on the main deck try to catch her eye, all of them ignorant, bless them, of the incidents from the year before. The captain of the ship – another fine man and an acquaintance, Beatrice reports with a wrinkled nose, of Don Pedro – waves to the two women from the comfort of the helm, where he stands with his quartermaster and Benedick.

Beatrice does not fly to her husband, bless her, but Hero feels her cousin relax at her side. She looks away from the glowing warmth between the two of them and focuses instead up, up, and up into the rigging and masts above her head.

“Remind me, cousin, of our destination?” she quips, just to fill the silence that’s settled between her and Beatrice.

Beatrice looks over at her, one knowing eyebrow creeping up on her forehead. “To Jamaica first, dear cousin,” she replies, “and from there, Florida, though I know not entirely why our masters would bid us to go as such.”

“Because Jamaica is to be your father’s haven, cousin,” says Benedick, loping down from the upper deck. He shoves his hands in his pockets and grins at her, leaving Hero helpless but to grin back. “And Florida is my second master’s port of call. Once there, we will secure his land as he bids and do our best to avoid going native.”

“And amen to that,” Beatrice says, clucking her tongue before pressing a kiss to her husband’s cheek. Despite her melancholy, Hero feels warmth bloom in her chest at the sight of unabridged happiness on the faces of both of her loved ones.

She passes their bags to an older man and thanks him for his pains before moving to the side of the ship. Beatrice lets her go, too interested by half in exploring what parts of the ship she can finagle her way into. In her quiet moment, one of the younger women already aboard comes and presses herself to Hero’s side. She is to be her maid both on the ship and in the New World; a companion, as best as Hero’s father is willing to provide.

Hero smiles at her and bids her to stare back at Messina with her. Her new maid, who introduces herself as Cecilia, obliges.

“Did you make yourself at home in my father’s house?” Hero asks, tracing those familiar lines in the heights of Messina’s mountains.

“For a night,” her maid says, “and a fine place it was, m’lady.”

Hero wants to press her for the truth – wants to direct her eyeline along the fields she ran through as a child – but this companion is too new and not yet dear. Instead, she hums in something she hopes the girl will interpret as understanding.

Beatrice’s laugh cuts through the bustle of the ship. Hero glances over her shoulder to find her cousin glowing in the sunlight, Benedick chasing her about as she dances her way through the rigging and the sailors, who indulge her.

Someone clears their throat at her side. Hero turns, still basking in her cousin’s happiness –

And sees a count, his hat tucked sheepishly in his hands.

Without a thought, she stumbles backwards, reaching out to grab her new maid’s hand. Cecilia looks between her new mistress and the count with wide eyes, but Hero’s rapidly-paling face is more than enough motivation for her to stay firmly glued to her side.

“Lady Hero,” Count Claudio says, his voice as soft as it was on the day they met. “I came as soon as I heard you were to depart from Messina.”

Hero’s response clogs her throat; she presses a hand to her chest in an attempt to dislodge it.

“I had hoped I could convince you to stay,” the count says, taking a step forward. “While your father may no longer be able to keep you in his house, Don Pedro, the prince, has awarded me an estate of my own. You would be welcomed to grace it with your presence.” He looks out at her from beneath his lashes – an imitation, Hero knows, despite her long-lived forgiveness, of the boy he was a summer ago. “And in coming, you would permit me to make amends where I once err’d.”

Another presence comes to press against Hero’s side. Looking to her right, Hero finds herself sandwiched between her stunned new maid and her lionhearted cousin. Beatrice simmers at the brim with wrath and merely stares down the count, allowing Hero what precious seconds she needs to find her voice again.

“Your offer is generous, count,” she says, dipping into a curtsy. “But I could not be parted from my cousin now.”

“Your cousin has a husband to warm her and keep her,” Count Claudio replies, glancing – and then blanching – at the sight of Beatrice. “Surely, madam, you will be wanted to keep him for yourself.”

“I am wanting of many things, count, but not in my husband,” Beatrice all but spits. Across the deck, Hero can track Benedick’s stare; can feel more than see his hand brush against the pommel of the officer’s sword he still wears.

Count Claudio, at a loss for allies, focuses in on Hero again. “Please, lady,” he says, offering her his hand. “If you will not bring yourself to come to my estate, do let me at least join you for part of your journey. You travel on behest of our shared master, do you not?” This he calls to Benedick. “I might accompany you on his behalf, and then depart once you have finished your trek across the ocean. Two sets of eyes and hands can make these heavy responsibilities lighter, and time in your company will, in turn, lighten my heart.”

“You are glibber in tongue than you once were, Count Lackbeard,” Benedick responds, his tone wrung out of humor. “If our master sent you, then by all means, come aboard. If you have come of your own leisure, however, your welcome belongs to the captain – and to the lady, should she wish to offer it.”

The captain, blissfully unaware of the growing tension on deck, asserts his consent before the crowd. Hero feels even eyes she does not know turn to her. Their expectations land heavy on her shoulders.

When she does speak, it is with both Cecilia and Beatrice’s hands clenching hers. “If you wish to travel on your master’s behalf, then I cannot stop you. Do not make this journey with the intention, however, of pursuing that which you would have sought a year ago.” She clears her throat and levels the count with an earnest gaze. “When I asked you to end your suit, I meant as much, and my position on the matter has not changed.”

Claudio’s expression shutters in on itself, his earnest boyhood impression briefly interrupted. He takes a deep breath, though, and returns to himself, leaving only the man behind.

“Might I work to change your mind, lady,” he says, bowing at the waist. “It seems that I will have two months to do just that.”

He looks to the captain, then, and smiles the sunbeam smile that Hero remembers falling in love with. “Do not leave port without me,” he orders, the picture of victory. “I’ll bring payment for the passage and lend a hand, too, should you find you need the help.”

The captain says – something, but Hero is too lost in the thundering of her heart to hear it. A misunderstanding cheer rises through the crew while she slumps into Beatrice, her new maid hovering at her side while Claudio departs.

“We can find another ship,” she hears Beatrice telling her, her voice almost a buzz amidst the thrumming of her pulse. “Benedick can pay off the captain, and we can find another way.”

“No,” Hero says, as though through a haze. “No, he may go where he will and try what he might.” She straightens as best she can, though Beatrice’s arms are still tight around her. Hero looks at her cousin with an old sadness in her eyes.

“I forgave him his wrongs long ago,” she says, gently tutting her cousin’s chin at her look of disgust. “But forgiving him and forgetting what he did are two separate matters, cousin. No matter how hard he tries, his future will not be tied to mine.”

She ignores the way her hands shake, but she straightens her linen dress, all the same, and offers Benedick and her new maid a brave smile.

She knows Beatrice is frowning behind her, and that she and Benedick will likely have words later, but that is not a matter which she can control. Instead, she reaches for Cecilia and tries to measure her breaths, one against the other.

In the awkward beats that follow, Benedick clears his throat. “There is a cabin for you ladies,” he says, motioning towards a door off of the main deck. “The crew have taken your things and set them there. I will be bunking with the crew.” The rueful look he shares with Beatrice doesn’t go unnoticed, but it is a moment of levity that Hero is more than grateful for.

“I suggest,” her cousin’s husband adds, “that you all go and acquaint yourselves with your lodgings. I’ll come to call you up when we’re ready to leave port.”

Cecilia moves first, of the lot of them, her hand still tucked into Hero’s. Hero lets her drag her along, stopping only to press a kiss to Benedick’s cheek. Beatrice lingers behind, as Hero suspected she would, but the press of her hand lingers against Hero’s skin even after she lets go.

The door to their designated cabin closes with a gentle click. Cecilia looks back at her new mistress with wide eyes as Hero sags against the door.

“Lady?” she asks as Hero closes her eyes. “Are you well? Could I bring you anything?”

Hero shakes her head and focuses on the press of wood against her back and the sounds of Messina, distant though they may be.

*

Their departure from the docks is, for all of the trials of their boarding, an enthusiastic one. Beatrice comes to the cabin not long after Hero to find her cousin and Cecilia sitting on the edge of the bed, going through one of Hero’s bags. Benedick comes knocking within the next hour, reporting both that the count has made himself at home with the crew below deck and that the ship is prepared to leave the bay.

Hero moves with Beatrice on one side and Cecilia at the other to make her way back above deck. There, she stands and watches as the anchor sets into the side of the ship and as Messina – beautiful Messina, her only home – starts to grow smaller and smaller behind her.

(In truth, the departure, for all of its excitement, is also agonizingly slow. She watches that villa, those vineyards, those mountains transform from familiar landmarks into smeared blotches and feels something deep in the cockles of her heart threaten to snap in two.)

Count Claudio, as every member of their small party anticipated, does make an attempt to approach her again, but her cousins and maid form an effective wall against him. Hero squeezes Beatrice’s hand and notices that the lines around her cousin’s eyes have already grown tight – and she cannot help but feel guilty, somehow.

By the time the sun kisses the western horizon, Messina – and Sicily – are no more than purples smears to the east. Hero looks back at them as the captain invites them to supper, then lets Beatrice drag her forward into something...new.

*

Within the first four days of their voyage, the passengers and the crew fall into a pattern. Hero and her maid dance around the sailors with wobbly legs until each step is a smooth one. In turn, they dance away from Count Claudio, making a point to take an afternoon meal in the women’s cabin and to set themselves apart at dinner.

Beatrice, lioness that she is, proves both entertainment and shield in the face of the ship’s newest passenger. She delights the sailors with her stories of the shore, leaving Benedick to huff at the outskirts of their circles while she carries on and laughs. With those same breaths, she wins several of the men over to their side without ever so much as mentioning Hero’s name. Those same gazes that, were she ashore, would have been assessing, become protective, as though Hero is a little sister to be picked on and protected, alike.

Not a one of them is cruel to her, not even in wit. Hero is able to draw one or two of them out after Beatrice lays her groundwork, and she soon finds herself among friends. There are games of checkers in the afternoons when the weather is fair and stories late into the evening, where both Benedick and Beatrice will shore her up while Cecilia goes about dancing to a raging fiddle.

To say Claudio does not endeavor to make himself known would be to lie, but after his first attempts – and after Beatrice uses her clever tongue to her advantage – there are few openings for him to do so. He escorts Hero to dinner in the captain’s cabin every night, but otherwise, it is difficult, if not impossible, for him to take a moment alone with her. Hero finds herself in the company of either her cousin, her maid, or the sailors often enough that while she longs for the quiet of a veranda, she relishes in the slow comfort that the _Albatross_ begins to provide.

It is, in short, a finer first four days at sea than she would have anticipated, given the unexpected company.

The morning of their fifth day on the water promises much the same pleasant tedium. Hero wakes to find Beatrice slipping out of their cabin but Cecilia pressed into her side, the maid still dozing in the gray light of the early morning. Hero catches a glimpse of her cousin’s smile and entertains herself by listening to Cecilia’s slow breaths and drawing patterns with her eyes in the ceiling above her.

When the two rouse themselves, it is only to dress and take tea on the upper deck, where they can watch the helmsman deftly guide the ship towards the Strait of Gibraltar. The captain reports that their escape from the Mediterranean is still a day away, but even now, Hero can make out the distant clouds of sails making their way to and from the sea’s welcoming shores.

“Captain!” calls a voice far above their heads. Hero looks up with the helmsmen and tries to spot which of the crew in the rigging it is who has spoken. Hercules reveals himself of his own volition, scurrying out of the forest of ropes and landing with a thud on the deck. Hero thinks nothing of it as he takes the captain aside, focusing instead on the over-steeped cup of tea in front of her. She takes a sip and smiles behind the porcelain as, down below, one of the sailors Beatrice has befriended attempts to teach her the knots necessary to keep Benedick’s hands behind his back.

She does not notice until later how the mood on the main deck shifts. The captain sends Hercules to report to the helmsman, who, in turn, begins to redirect their course. Above her head, the masts begin to shift, creaking with the wind and the threaten of an afternoon’s rain.

Come dinner, Count Claudio approaches her, requesting that he keep her company as both she and her cousin make their way to the mess. Hero does not decline, but rather sets him on the other side of Beatrice, smiling not unkindly as her cousin’s tongue run circles around Claudio’s wit.

As she squeezes past a set of sailors, she hears the first murmurs of discontent.

“No ship running black sails is a good one,” says one of the gunners.

“We’ll be fine,” says his companion. He touches his brow at the sight of the women, then nudges the gunner until he does the same.

Beatrice, busy with her wit, plays her role as Hero’s protector beautifully. Hero, however, watches the men go with a faltering expression, though she curtsies in response to their kindness.

“What’s the matter with a ship with black sails?” she asks the cook as they come to him for supper.

Beatrice looks curious, whereas Claudio, lingering in the doorway, looks – eager.

The cook, in turn, flushes and rubs the back of his neck. “Don’t you be worrying about that, Lady Hero,” he says, passing Beatrice a plate of gruel. “We’ve never had a problem leaving these waves before, and there’ll be no trouble now.”

“So black sails mean trouble, cousin; you have your answer.” Beatrice accepts the tray with a gracious nod, but now even her merry brow has been drawn. “Come – thank you, good sir, for this new meat; we will make hunters of ourselves above deck.”

The cook hesitates, then nods in tentative understanding. Beatrice beams at him, running his flush further up his neck, then sallies forth, linking her arm with Claudio’s to all but throw him out of the galley.

Hero lingers behind, sharing a glance with the cook. “They are dangerous, then?”

The cook huffs to cover his bluster, then passes her a tray of her own. “Know this, Lady Hero,” he says, “it may not do to judge a book by its cover, but a captain can often judge a ship by its sails. Any man flying under a black sail is telling you something about himself before you have a chance to know him – otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered with the expense.”

Hero tilts her head, then nods. The cook grunts as she makes her way out of the galley and back onto the main deck, where Beatrice and Cecilia have made short work laying a table for the three of them. Benedick, across the deck, has occupied Claudio, by all means, though Hero can feel the young man’s baleful frustration as he glances back at their merry scene.

“You know, cousin,” Beatrice says as Hero sits, smoothing out the table cloth she’s summoned up from...somewhere. She pitches her voice to a whisper, her tone stern but friendly, “It may do to have another match of words with your pernicious suitor. It seems that when we left Messina, so too did the word ‘no’ leave his understanding.”

Hero glances over to the two men, finding them shortly brought up with some of the sailors not currently occupied with other duties. While the past several days have renewed her sense of comfort, even looking at him for too long feels like staring at the sun – where the crowds in Messina saw a beacon, she now feels over-warm and nauseous with fear.

“I can speak with him,” she hears herself say, even so. “I _will_ speak with him, for I would not have him making your time less pleasant.”

Beatrice snorts. “If you were concerned about my constitution, we could have left him in Messina,” she says. At the same time, she reaches out and rubs Hero’s knuckles with her thumb. “But you have a good heart, cousin. Remind him of its limitations, and perhaps the pup will better understand his training.”

Despite her discomfort, Hero smiles. Between them, Cecilia makes a point of pouring them each a small glass of wine. The two women toast with a quiet “tink” of glass, and the tension in the air is forgotten.

Hero holds true to her word, though her stomach ties itself in knots for the rest of the afternoon. To make a point of finding Count Claudio becomes, abruptly, more difficult than she imagined – the sailors who have been helping to keep the space between them congenial watch with nervous stares as she wanders about the ship, abruptly left to her own devices. In her heart of hearts, Hero thanks them, but she cannot help but sigh to feel their heavy gazes on her shoulders.

Claudio, when she finds him, is occupied in a game of backgammon with one of the men most often found in the crow’s nest. He nearly upends the board in an attempt to stand as she comes near, much to the annoyance, it’s clear, of his companion. He reaches out to press a kiss to her knuckles, and Hero allows him to do so, tamping down on the thundering desire to run away thrumming through the whole of her body.

“If you do not mind,” she says to Claudio’s companion. “I would but borrow the count and return him to you shortly.”

“Borrow as you will,” says the sailor. “Teach him strategy err you go, and he may have a chance of winning the game when he returns.”

The hints of frustration that turn Claudio’s cheeks red reveal themselves, here, but Hero is almost too occupied with her own hands to notice. He has composed himself by the time she forces herself to look up, leaving her to find him wearing a discomfortingly soft smile.

“I have been meaning to speak to you for some time, lady,” he says as the two of them walk towards the bow, “but it seems your cousin seems to join her husband’s company as a soldier.”

He means it as a joke, but there’s a hard edge to the amusement he forces into his tone. Hero goes to stand against the railing, resisting the urge all the while to rub her hands against her arms.

“It is on those two soldiers’ behalves that I speak with you, Count,” she says, looking out over the horizon.

Claudio chuckles. “There is no need to make excuses, good lady. If you wish to speak with me, speak. I am but a captive audience.”

Hero glances back at him. Were she a year younger, the picture he makes would be entrancing. As it stands, now, she can see the steel in his backbone and the bruises still healing on his knuckles from some or another combat.

“I would remind you,” Hero says, her voice soft but firm, “that neither of my cousins nor I am amiable to your wooing, Count Claudio. When you asked to come aboard this ship, you said that any attempts to do so were a thing of the past.”

Claudio rubs his chin, the corner of his mouth curling into a smile. “Forgive me,” he says, with a short bow, “but your beauty makes you difficult to resist, Lady Hero. I find myself relentlessly reminded of those days we spent together last summer.”

He steps forward into Hero’s space, leaving little breathing room between the two of them. One of his hands comes down to circle Hero’s wrist. “Do you not think on those happy days, as well?” he asks, tracing over her skin.

Hero glances behind her, back out to the open sea. Suddenly, the shore seems so far away, what with Claudio’s sunlight bearing down on her and threatening to burn.

(But coming closer – closer than it should – are those…?)

The grip on her wrist tightens. Hero turns back to find Claudio all but bent in two over her. “Consider, lady,” he says, his voice puffing against her face. “If I could but turn back time, I would make all endeavors to do so, if only to try my hand against the walls of your heart once more.”

“I have bid you,” Hero says, trying and failing to tug her hand away, “to stop. If you will not, then this ship is not for you.”

The smile on Claudio’s face grows – sharper. His voice grows softer as he leans in. “What more would you have of me?” he asks. Though his tone is still amused, Hero’s wrist could cry out of its own accord from the strength of his hold. “I have left you aside for a year, good lady, and allowed you to stew in that reputation that you requested of yourself at our second abandoned altar. You have had no other offers, yes? And that is why your father has sent you from Messina. But,” and here, he lingers on the word, “were you to reconsider those words we once whispered to one another, you could forgo the New World in favor of those fields you once told me you so loved.”

A sudden pang of longing shoots through Hero’s heart – not, as Claudio might wish, for him, but for those same fields he speaks of, the ones that she may well not see for years to come, if not ever again.

Claudio takes half a step back, her wrist still in hand, and is the picture of sympathy. “Ah, lady,” he says. “It would not be a poor life, would it? To be the jewel in my crown and a boon to your father? To be adored and to sooth, in turn?”

Hero reaches for her voice – for Beatrice’s voice, for anything at all – but it feels as though the breath has been stolen from her lungs. She tugs at her wrist again, but Claudio’s grip is unrelenting, tight to the point where she knows she will bruise.

Above her, Claudio’s eyes go dark.

Behind her, the noise is sucked from the air.

And then -

Three things.

  1. Beatrice’s voice calls to Hero from across the ship, tight with alarm.

  2. Claudio’s gaze shifts up and over her head.

  3. The entire world quakes beneath her feet.




Claudio releases her wrist as the ship rocks, leaving Hero to collapse onto the ground. Almost immediately, there is a sailor at her side, helping her back up with one hand while his other reaches for a pistol.

“Captain!” shouts the man in the crow’s nest. “Pirates!”

Somewhere to Hero’s left, she hears the answering shout. “Thank you, Mister Starkey, for announcing the obvious. Men! To the cannons!”

Claudio reaches for her, in the moment that follows, but there is Beatrice at his side, a wildcat with her hair tied back, and there is the sailor, taking his arm. “Below deck, boy,” says the man – and Hero must get his name, truly, to thank him later. Claudio almost snarls in response, but the ship rocks with another round of cannon fire. He stumbles back towards the tertiary mast, caught only by the sailor in question, while Beatrice throws herself towards Hero.

“Ladies!” and there is Captain Erose, hauling the two men back onto their feet. “If you would be so kind as to retreat to your cabin. I cannot have my men distracted from their fight trying to protect you.”

To her great surprise, Hero does not hear Beatrice argue. Instead, she finds herself back on her feet and shaking from head to toe as the two of them make for their cabin. A third round of cannon fire fills the air with smoke and men’s screams as they duck inside, holding the door open only long enough to bring Cecilia in from down below.

How Hero finds herself on the floor again, she could not say, but when she comes back to herself, she is crouched by the side of the bed, hands tucked behind the back of her head while Beatrice, bless her, reminds her to breathe.

The ship rocks beneath her, the cannons she assumes to be somewhere beneath her own feet roaring with fire and gunpowder. She does not remember the black ship being so close and does not, now, have the opportunity to look. Cecilia, though, at the portcullis, gasps, then screams – and within seconds a cannon ball flies through their quarters, leaving a splintering hole in its wake. Even Beatrice – steady Beatrice – cannot contain herself, throwing her body over Hero’s as the world seems to come to an end around them.

Hero does not know how long it goes on. One more cannon ball flies through their little nest, taking the largest mirror with it. After hours – or maybe only minutes – her ears are ringing, and Beatrice is mumbling prayers above her that Hero hasn’t heard her say in earnest since they were children together.

But slowly – slowly – the noise comes to a stop.

Before too long, the most Hero can hear is the sound of the women’s ragged breathing and the steady thunk of footsteps both below her and on deck.

A moment passes.

Another.

Three raps – military, neat – tap on the door to the women’s cabin.

Hero looks up at Beatrice. Beatrice looks to Cecilia.

Their visitor knocks again.

Desperately, Hero reaches for a shattered plank of wood. Beatrice takes one of their broken bedposts in hand, while Cecilia gingerly scoops up glass from the mirror, wielding it like a clumsy dagger.

Then, pushing her hair back from her face, it is Beatrice who opens the door, with Hero and Cecilia flanking her like avenging angels.

The face that greets them is not familiar. His dress is course – ripped black pants, an unsightly beard, and what is clearly an officer’s borrowed coat. Beatrice moves to swing at him after a moment’s hesitate, but a confident hand comes up and catches the bedpost before it can greet its target.

“Ladies,” says the stranger, offering them all a short bow all without letting go of Beatrice’s weapon. “If you would be so kind as to join the rest of us on deck, we would appreciate the pleasure of your company.”

He yanks the bedpost from Beatrice’s hands and casts it aside as though it is nothing. Beside her, Hero hears more than sees Cecilia drop her shard of glass.

The man at the door tsks, then reaches out. Cecilia scampers backwards, but her hands, Hero can see, are covered in blood.

“Lady,” their visitor says. “You will not be harmed at my hands so long as you do not try to harm me. Now come; you have hurt yourself, and we would see you tended to.”

He glances sidelong at Hero, whose own board of wood has sunk to her side. She looks at him, then at Beatrice.

Her cousin, for once, does not meet her gaze. Instead, her expression casts outward – first towards the hole in their cabin wall, then to the pistol in the man’s belt, then up towards the main deck.

Hero thinks of Benedick and nearly vomits.

She tosses her wooden plank to the side and reaches down without a thought, tearing her dress as she goes. She crosses over to Cecilia, wrapping one arm around her maid’s shoulders while bandaging her hands with the other.

The man in the doorway watches all, then steps to the side.

Hero clears her throat. The distance in Beatrice’s eyes retreats.

The three women walk from their nest together, huddled close to one another. The man – the pirate, Hero corrects herself, for what else can he be? – closes the door behind them and herds them up onto the main deck as though they’re sheep.

It becomes abundantly clear, within moments, what all has happened to the crew.

Beatrice, Hero, and Cecilia step out into a gray world drenched in smoke. The deck smells of fire and blood, and there are sailors – pirates – everywhere. Many are in the process of throwing bodies overboard. Hero takes one took and lets out a wordless cry in the same moment that her checkers partner goes into the sea.

Beatrice, in the same breath, lets out a noise of relief – and Hero is all but forced to follow her gaze.

Tied to the main mast of the ship are the ship’s officers. Hero finds Benedick among them. He is bleeding heavily from one shoulder, but it is the one furthest from his heart, so she does not fear. He looks over at them as they appear from the smoke, though – and for the first time, Hero sees true fear in his eyes.

Claudio can be found not a few men to his right, in between the captain and the helmsman. Hero does not let her gaze linger there, though she cannot deny her relief to see him still living. Instead, she looks through the crew of pirates, her mind desperate for some sort of sign – some sort of reasoning for why these people would do such a thing –

“Ah, there they are,” says a voice. The women turn as one, pressing closer together, to look towards the helm.

Walking down through the smoke is a man in a red coat inappropriately long, considering how warm the days are. He bears a broad hat on his head, and his face, when it comes into view, is free of blood and bruises. His sword hangs casually in the belt wrapped around his waist, as though he hadn’t needed to draw it at all.

He is a captivating picture, steady in the midst of the fear – but it is the shadow behind him that draws Hero’s attention.

*

On the day Claudio is meant to wed her uncle Antonio’s daughter, Hero stares out at the crowd of her companions from beneath a thick, black veil. Beatrice is at her side, as ever, as are Margaret and another one of the household staff, but it is the men ahead of her who hold her eye.

There is Don Pedro, whose sweet words would have won her over for him alone, had he not been wooing on someone else’s behalf.

There is Benedick, steady as a rock but with his heart on his sleeve as he takes in the gathered parties.

There is Claudio – one blackened eye meant to draw sympathy but with scruffs on his shoes and scratch marks on his hands, from where he threw her to the ground.

There is Leonato, her father, looking off into the middle distance, as though while his body is here, he has long departed.

And – most strange of all – there is Don John.

She knows not much about John the Bastard. She heard of his rebellion after his father legitimized him; she heard from Don Pedro of their renewed trust, if it could be called as such. She may have danced with him, once, while he wore the guise of a mask, but then again, she may have danced with every member of the household and all the citizens of Messina, as well.

(He kissed her hand, once, his touch gentle but his gaze scorching in the front halls of her home – but she shivers at the memory of his eyes on hers and has, since the day, tried to put the moment from her mind.)

And now, he stands adjacent to her altar, watching the ceremony with an expression near her father’s. The curl of his mouth reeks of disdain, and the chains around his wrists – they would offend had he not nearly warped her into a tool for his own revenge.

Hero catches herself staring at the noble chin, at those chained hands, and looks away. Her heart aches both at the sight of Claudio, once so lovely, and at the memory of the previous days – at what imagined slight she must have presented to have been dealt such a foul hand.

(As she comes to the altar, before Claudio can bid her to reveal her face and she, in turn, can forgive but not accept him, she notices one last thing. Her father wears black, as does the bridal party, while Claudio and Don Pedro are dressed for a wedding.

Don John, for all of his faults – for the blood on his hands that she can see and cannot – is dressed in dark colors, as fixed and demanding as a storm cloud on a bright day.)

*

Hero knows she is staring, but she also knows, idly, that she can likely blame her lack of manners on shock.

Don John flanks the pirate captain with his head held high. There are no more chains around his wrist, though he’s long since swapped his open white shirt for a black one. He’s still missing his buttons, Hero notices, her eyes idle, but the fine sword he once wore has been swapped for a cutlass and a pistol.

He appears just as dangerous as he ever was.

He looks at her – really looks at her – in the half a second before the pirate captain comes to step in front of her and the women beside her. Hero does not know what he sees; her gaze is ripped towards the pirate captain, his bright red coat, and the slow, gentlemanly smile on his face.

“Ladies,” he says, touching the brim of his hat. “We’re sorry to disturb you on such a dreary day, but I’m afraid that we have business aboard the ship. It’s best for your safety that you stay where my men can see you. We don’t want you to end up mistaken for part of the crew.”

His hand brushes the hilt of his sword as he speaks, a quiet threat that – looking back – elicits more of a reaction from the captured men than it does from the women, themselves.

Well. That’s not entirely true. Cecilia, for all of her upright vigor, faints almost immediately. One of the pirates catches her and hauls her back towards the restrained officers. Hero does not watch his hands, does not want to see, but she hears a shout and the drawing of swords behind her.

The captain does not pay his men any mind. Beatrice presses close to her as he starts to circle the two of them, his gaze shifting between their clutched hands, the Albatross’s captain, and the rest of the officers.

“I was told that some of your chattel would fetch a fine price in fair Italy,” says the pirate captain to the officers. “Rumor has it that you lot are of a finer breeding that one might expect. Hear this: if the party I ask for comes without complaint, the rest of you can take to the sea and do – whatever it is you aimed to do, all without need to fear.” He pauses, circling the mast and inspected the men like stock animals at an auction.

Hero hears more than sees someone spit at his feet. She ducks her head away as a smack rings through the air, and Claudio’s familiar, furious voice swears up and down the ship.

Her eyes, cast away, land on Don John.

He is as composed as he ever was – which is to say, well enough. He’s picked up color over his time at sea (though through what means he came to this ship, this crew, she cannot imagine; a life of piracy was not among the “brave punishments” that Benedick suggests for the bastard prince.) The only sign of recognition he gives her is a short, shared gaze. He glances towards the pirate captain – then quick as a whip, one eyebrow quirks up, then down.

He didn’t expect her to be here.

Without a thought, Hero’s mouth twists in confusion.

Claudio’s swearing slowly comes to a stop, and Hero looks away on impulse. Glancing over Beatrice’s shaking shoulder, she can see the count with blood dripping onto his tunic – but the pirate captain holding a handkerchief up to his nose. For a long second, she can’t tell whether or not he’s smothering the count or aiding him, but then the captain pulls the handkerchief away and passes it off to one of his men.

The _Albatross’s_ captain clears his throat from the other side of the ring of men, his expression filled with determination but no small amount of shame. The pirate captain rounds the main mast and crosses his arms over his chest, looking for all the world as though this is just another day; a fine walk in fields of vines.

“What parties are you looking for?” asks the passenger captain. Almost immediately, Beatrice raises her voice; Claudio joins her, though Benedick stays silent. Hero shrinks in on herself as Beatrice lets go of her shoulders, ready, it seems, to rip the pirate captain’s sword from his belt and do battle with him, herself.

The pirate captain waves a hand – and then Hero feels a touch on her wrist. She whirls, prepared to claw and scratch, but it is Don John who uses a gentle touch to steer her away from the mast, even as other pirates come forward to grasp Beatrice under the arms and restrain her.

He has his pistol in hand, and he kisses it to her temple, but the touch – all of him – is as insubstantial as silk. Hero knows she could pull away if she wanted to, even as he adjusts her arm to press it against her back. 

Across the deck, the pirate captain tips Beatrice’s chin by with his finger. Beatrice bites at him – and at last, Benedick makes a sound; a frightened, victorious laugh that seems to escape him without his permission.

The pirate captain rocks back on his heels, a broad grin coming over his face. “You would make a fine pirate, lady,” he says, taking his hat from his head. Then, turning away, he looks back to the vessel’s captain. “I’m in search of a Lord Padua, specifically. Which one is he?”

“I go by that name,” Hero hears Benedick say through gritted teeth. Beatrice lungs forward again, but the pirates anticipate her, and she’s dragged towards the edge of the ship itself. Hero all but slips from Don John’s grasp, a cry escaping her lips, but the bastard prince drags her back again, his grip firmer as he presses her against his chest.

“Do not antagonize them,” he whispers, his breath hot against her ear. “Do not give them anything that they can use against you, and you may make it from this encounter unharmed.”

“You would threaten me again, my lord?” Hero hisses back. She turns just enough to see his dark eyes widen. His grip on her falters – then tightens again.

“I would repay the debt I owe you, lady,” he replies, his voice almost too low to hear. “And then I would see us part ways with the world in balance.”

Across the ship, the pirate captain busies himself directing his men. Pistols and swords come up as a lone man unties the officers. Even Claudio stays where he is while Benedick is brought forward and his hands placed in irons.

“My thanks, gentlemen,” says the pirate captain as his man reties the officers’ bonds. “From what I’ve heard, you’ll fetch a pretty bounty from a prince-y fellow. Behave yourself, and you’ll live to take to the sea again.”

Beatrice is screaming, snapping, and snarling, but the pirates have her in tow. The pirate captain turns, pushing Benedick ahead of him. He slows only when he spots Don John, Hero still in his grasp. Hero sees him smile, a broad, buck-toothed thing that would beget gentle humor under any other circumstance.

“Find something you like, Johnny?”

Hero feels Don John go still behind her.

“You can bring her aboard, if you like,” the captain says with a shrug.

A sharp crack echoes across the ship. Despite herself, Hero shrinks into Don John even as Beatrice, across the ship, smashes a man’s nose with her palm. The pirates have her arms behind her back in a matter of seconds, and the same swords and pistols that once pinned the officers swivel to her. Beatrice’s eyes are wide with panic and tears even as a pirate fits his pistol underneath her jaw.

“Wait!” Hero shrieks, darting forward. Don John goes to catch her – she can feel his hands on her arms – but she is too quick. She reaches out towards Beatrice, but it is the captain who stops her, this time, one broad hand coming down on her shoulder. She wheels to look up at him, beseeching. “Please – the man you want, he is her husband. I will go with you, instead, if you leave him behind; I can fetch a far greater bounty.”

Behind the captain’s back, Hero sees Don John go ashen. Across the ship, both Beatrice and Claudio scream Hero’s name. The captain, however, commands her more immediate attention with a single raised eyebrow.

“And who might you be?”

“The daughter of the governor of Messina,” Hero says.

“You are no officer.”

“This is true, sir.”

The captain’s eyebrow climbs higher. “And you have no relation to the prince.”

Hero does not allow her gaze to fall from the man’s face. “My father is friends with the prince. Press the right suit, and you can have bounties from the both of them. Please, sir, do not separate my cousin from her husband.” She glances over her shoulder and finds herself, in this moment of terror and pain, seized with the hysterical desire to laugh. “You will only invite her vengeance if you do so.”

The pirate captain glances between the two of them, then around at the rest of his men. Strangely, Hero thinks, his gaze lingers on Don John; she feels if she watched the man closely enough, she would likely see wheels of thought turning in his head.

“I invite both her vengeance and that of her husband if I take you aboard,” he says conversationally. “But lady, I have not come to where I am in this life without enjoying my dalliances.”

The large hand still on her shoulder is abruptly a force to be reckoned with. The captain shoves her towards Don John, leaving her to stumble over her feet for the sheer power behind his thrust. Don John’s arms are around her in an instant, and despite herself, she welcomes even that passing, poisonous familiarity. They right her together to the soundtrack of the captain’s laughter, all while Beatrice screams and screams.

“Scuttle the ship!” the captain commands, moving on his own back towards the attacking vessel. With a final glance that Hero misses, he looks back to Beatrice with a tip of his hat. “I look forward to your vengeance, lady, in whatever form it might come.”

Hero has not heard Beatrice swear outside of the privacy of their shared rooms. To hear her now, railing against the captain with Benedick’s and Claudio’s voices joining her, only lends to the madness of the situation.

Don John’s arms are still around her.

“Johnny!” the captain shouts as pirates start to retreat, grabbing what they can as they go. “Take her to the brig, won’t you? Or your hammock – but at least wait until we’ve set sail.”

Hero looks up at Don John to meet furious black eyes. His grip on her waist tightens out of the blue, and she finds her face turned to the crook of his neck of no volition of her own. The pirate captain laughs – and then his thundering steps take him away from the _Albatross_ and back, Hero assumes, onto his own.

She cannot see what the rest of them see; cannot bring herself to look at Beatrice or Benedick or even Claudio for her shame. In that moment of chaos, though, it is the rumble of Don John’s voice in her ear that offers her a rope to cling to.

“You have not helped yourself, Lady Hero, nor have you made it easier for me to help you.”

And despite herself, that mad desire to laugh bubbles up in her throat. Hero makes a wet, sobbing sound and squeezes her eyes shut, even as Don John’s grip on her loosens. By the time she manages to look at him again, he’s begun to move her away from the passenger ship and towards the boarding plank.

“I had to die to save myself from the violence you would have done to me,” Hero tells him, the sound of Beatrice’s breaking voice ringing in her ears. She meets his gaze in the middle of that plank and sees, briefly, a flicker of panic – as though she is the type to fling herself into the ocean, to die once again.

Behind him, Beatrice is sobbing, Benedick tucked into her side.

Don John’s gaze is unrelenting and dark.

“Do my sacrifice credit,” Hero continues, her voice still soft, “and you might call the debt between us settled.”

She turns her back, then, on the passenger ship; on her cousins; on Count Claudio, still tied to his post. She turns her back on Don John and makes her way onto the pirate ship herself, her hands clenched into fists to hide the way she’s shaking.


End file.
